Heavy Seas Black Cannon

I missed reviewing beer-nectar so much that I decided to do a second review this evening. Beer #2 of the evening is Heavy Seas Black Cannon from Clipper City Brewing.

If you were to close your eyes and give this beer a whiff, you would find that it smells exactly many other traditional American IPAs…grapefruit bomb!

The flavors are surprisingly mild, something that makes me quite happy. Plenty of hop flavors in there, no doubt. However, there just isn’t the bite I was expecting. I frankly can’t pick up much in the way of sweet flavors, so I don’t know what’s balancing the beer out so well! But hell, who cares if the beer is good, right?

I am going to digress from the review momentarily for some commentary about this particular style (black IPA). I don’t know when this style first appeared. I do know that over the last year, the style has exploded in popularity; more and more breweries are coming out with black IPAs. In my honest opinion, I don’t know what the hype is about. Then again, I tend to kinda be anti-beer-hype in general, huh?

Getting back to the Black Cannon….

This is a solid brew. I would definitely drink this again and, in particular, would love to have it on draught!

Stone’s 11th Anniversary beer is usually given the nod as the first “Black IPA”. I think many beer folks are trying to get the “official” style to be called Cascadian Dark Ale or CDA, though the Beer Advocate guys are calling it an American Dark Ale. I like the CDA term myself, it’s a bit more descriptive (I hate vague style names).

I tend to like the style, but only when the “black” or “dark” part of it includes the flavors from the darker malts. Many beers in this style tend to just be dark hop bombs, which is a shame because those beers could be really interesting if they had some roasted malt flavors (though it is a bit of a mind game drinking a dark beer that tastes like an IPA).

The best CDA I’ve had was from Deschutes, called Hop in the Dark. It was quite hoppy, like an American IPA, but had a nice body and some great roasted malt flavors, though not enough to make it a hoppy porter or stout (though it was borderline).